California's jobless rate inches higher

UNEMPLOYMENT

Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Saturday, April 17, 2010

California's unemployment rate rose to 12.6 percent in March even though employers created 4,200 new jobs.

According to a report issued Friday by the Employment Development Department, the unemployment rate increased from 12.5 percent in February despite the job gains as Californians who had previously quit looking for work rejoined the job hunt.

Amerisource CEO Doubts Amazon will be a "Significant Force" in Drug IndustryMedia: Fortune

The state department estimated that 2.3 million Californians were out of work in March, with a record 39 percent jobless for more than 27 weeks.

With this long-term unemployment in mind, Congress again extended, through June 2, the period of eligibility for extraordinary benefits of up to 99 weeks. In normal times benefits last 26 weeks.

Employment department spokeswoman Loree Levy said Congress acted in time to prevent any disruption in payments to unemployed people who qualify for extended benefits. Even so, roughly 100,000 Californians have been out of work so long that they have exhausted even the 99-week maximum and are now ineligible for any benefits, she said.

Another labor market gauge, the underemployment rate, adds people forced to work part-time and discouraged job seekers to the jobless ranks.

The state's underemployment rate for March was 23.9 percent.

Focusing on the Bay Area, Friday's report suggests that the Silicon Valley job market has begun a small but decisive upturn after a long, steep slide, amid reports that employers like Google, Cisco and Intel have begun hiring more aggressively.

Kavanagh said the region had experienced losses from May 2008, when payroll employment registered 999,600, through November 2009, when it seems to have bottomed out at 839,600 jobs. Since then, this seasonally adjusted count has improved slightly to 844,100 jobs.

"The magnitude isn't enough to offset the decline but it's in a good direction," she said.

The trend is not quite as positive in metropolitan San Francisco.

Kavanagh said seasonally adjusted payrolls in the San Francisco metro region had shrunk from a little over 1 million in May 2008 to 922,600 in December 2009. Since then a series of ups and downs, including a 200-job gain in March, have left the count at 921,100 with no increase comparable to San Jose.

Meanwhile, seasonally adjusted payroll employment continues to decline in metropolitan Oakland, which includes all of Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

The two-county zone entered the housing-led recession when its job count peaked at 1.048 million in June 2007. Since then East Bay payrolls have headed mostly down. In March, the region lost 1,100 jobs as its seasonally adjusted job count sank to 943,900 - and that's before the region absorbs the thousands of job losses associated with the closure of New United Motor Manufacturing on April 1.